WILLIAM WATSON
Solo pianist William Watson took his musical inspiration for his second album, BurnhamWoods, from such diverse sources as Renoir's painting "The Luncheon of the Boating Party," grandmother and family matriarch Fannie Woods Burnham, a zen garden, the Jewish mystical teachings of the Kabbalah, Celtic history, the Buddhist doctrine of Anicca, the philosophy of Sarte, and love.Watson has a lifetime of feelings and experiences bursting to get out through his music.

The child of civil rights workers in Mississippi during the turbulent Sixties, William went on to study anthropology in Africa and South America, and later got degrees in anthropology, philosophy and psychology. Throughout it all he used music as his artistic outlet, and finally, in 1996, he began sharing it with the world by releasing his first album, Fields, also a solo piano recording on BurnhamWoods Records.
In the liner notes for his BurnhamWoods album, Watson credits some of his inspirations -paintings by Renoir, Kandinsky, and Van Gogh; books by John Steinbeck, Walt Whitman, Toni Morrison, Stendhal, William Faulkner and Daniel Matt; and music by Janis Ian, Patsy Cline, Emmylou Harris, Tim Story, Lyle Mays, Joe Sample, k.d. lang, Horowitz, Pavarotti and others.

In his music, William Watson combines intellect and passion, knowledge and empathy, philosophy and love. Whether he's enjoying great art, researching history, traveling or interacting with people, Watson gathers insights for his music. "But the most special are those rare moments of mystical transcendence or deep insight that change you forever."

Those moments include the deep sadness he felt when he discovered racism (see the civil rights compositions on Fields), the spiritual ecstasy upon first reading the Kabbalah ("Tikkun Olam"), the scary excitement of riding on a horse-drawn cart in the wilds of Africa and watching a full-moon rise "so large it felt like a colliding planet" ("Dogon Moon" on Fields), the religious force of fasting for five days in the Amazon Rain Forest and meditating ("Garden of Zen"), the emotional joy of standing in front of a real painting and being moved to tears ("Renoir: Boating Party"), and the fresh discovery of hearing his music recorded in a top studio rather than simply as he plays it (both albums).Those moments include the deep sadness he felt when he discovered racism (see the civil rights compositions on Fields), the spiritual ecstasy upon first reading the Kabbalah ("Tikkun Olam"), the scary excitement of riding on a horse-drawn cart in the wilds of Africa and watching a full-moon rise "so large it felt like a colliding planet" ("Dogon Moon" on Fields), the religious force of fasting for five days in the Amazon Rain Forest and meditating ("Garden of Zen"), the emotional joy of standing in front of a real painting and being moved to tears ("Renoir: Boating Party"), and the fresh discovery of hearing his music recorded in a top studio rather than simply as he plays it (both albums).

It all began in rural Mississippi where William grew up during the social struggles of the Sixties, the son of civil rights workers (his father set up the federal Head Start Program in three counties). "Medgar Evers was the first NAACP leader in Mississippi and he was assassinated when I was a few years old. Fannie Lou Hamer was a black woman with no formal education, who challenged the state's Democratic party at their National Convention in 1964 where she spoke on national television. Freedom Summer was in 1964 when the Student NonViolent Coordinating Committee came to Mississippi to focus the media's attention on the civil rights movement there." These people and events inspired compositions on Watson's Fields album ("Toccata: For Medgar Evers," "Fannie Lou Hamer" and "Freedom Summer: Prayers, Yearning, In The Fields").

"Many weekends when I was a little boy, my father was gone, and men from the NAACP came to our home to stay when he wasn't there. Years later when I was grown I asked my parents what that was all about and they told me my father was traveling to other counties to set up civil rights programs and the men were there to keep our home frombeing burned down by the Ku Klux Klan while he was gone."William often heard great gospel music in black churches where his parents helped organize voter registration drives. His father also had a business interest in a honky-tonk where William regularly listened to music on the jukebox which was full of blues tunes and Motown pop. Surrounded by a family of musicians, he grew up playing an antique grand piano built for Richard Wagner by German piano-makers Rud. lbach & Sons.

William started formal piano lessons in the second grade, but most of his lessons came from young teachers just graduated from college who only taught one year at his school before moving on because of the social isolation. "The nearest small town of 5,000 people was 13 miles from my home in the woods so I grabbed whatever instruction I could. Those teachers taught me to love the music of Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Rachmaninoff and Chopin, and the importance of disciplined practice to develop technique."After graduating from high school, William began readying for a university music audition while working as a disc jockey at a country music radio station. He learned to appreciate Willie Nelson and Patsy Cline while intensely practicing a Chopin nocturne, a Gershwin prelude and a Mozart sonata. William landed a piano-performance scholarship at the University of Southern Mississippi and began practicing seven hours a day with the intention of becoming a concert pianist. But he grew to dislike the competition among his musical peers. "Other musicians had always been a source of joy and validation to me, not obstacles to overcome."William turned to other interests, eventually graduating with a double-major BS Degree in Philosophy/Religions and Anthropology. "The reason I studied those kinds of things is because I have always been interested in the way people make meaning in their lives."

His anthropological studies took him both to Africa to see the Dogon rock paintings and to study the distribution of labor between men and women in modern Mali, and to South America for studies in ethnology (he trekked through the Andes Mountains at 18,000 feet and rafted down an Amazon tributery). Watson went on to get his Masters Degree in Psychology which led him to practice psychotherapy with drug addicts, and implement drug prevention programs through the university where he served as an administrator. After a year in Baton Rouge, he moved to San Francisco and began seriously pursuing his musical career.Throughout his years of education and employment, Watson continued to play the piano, and since the early Eighties has experimented with music "that is neither classical nor pop." As he began writing original material, he found himself sometimes following traditional musical forms like sonatas which develop through movements, also trying avant-garde forms like dramatic minimalism, and other times incorporating rural folk sounds and rhythm patterns. Highly expressive and evocative, his music stimulates listeners to use their imagination, whether following William's original inspiration for the tune (as described in his liner notes) or traveling off on their own original journey using his music as their soundtrack. I always admired the sound of the early Windham Hill records, and since a lot of them were recorded at Different Fur Recording studio with engineer Howard Johnston, who has engineered and co-produced many of George Winston's albums, I made it a point to work with Howard there."

Watson's first CD, Fields,, received airplay on hundreds of radio stations around the world and charted on the national NAV "Airwaves" chart. The recording also led to William's nomination as "Male Artist of the Year" by GLAMA (the Gay & Lesbian American Music Awards)."It's a beautiful experience for anyone to follow their dream and take it as far as they can," states Watson. I find it immensely satisfying to create and present my music. I hope my music can be a catalyst for people to enjoy themselves emotionally."